An Acceptional Tail

I read and grade papers for a living. While I was recently compelled to poke a hole in my eardrum with a mechanical pencil when I read the 9,543rd paper on “why bow hunting rocks,” for the most part, my job has its perks: a great schedule, lots of autonomy, and an office door that locks.

One of the non-contractual perks, though, is cackling at student errors. If you are one of my students and are reading this right now, rest assured I would never chuckle at *you*–no you are all that is triumphant luminosity and startling genius; it’s all theothersto whom I’m referring. Most certainly, you would *never* struggle with subject/verb agreement or rely on spellcheck over what your human instincts might tell you.

I used to keep a comprehensive list of these nuggets, but then, after the time a student wrote an essay, quite tearily, about how her family had just buried her grandmother with the things most important to her–her Peekapoo (euthanized) and her bingo dauber–my spirit for list-keeping sagged like K-Fed’s Calvins.

“Chris found a rancid note, asking for a thousand dollars, or his hamster would be killed.”

“The mother had many paternal feelings for her child.”

“The veranda rights suck.”

“All my life, I’ve wanted to attend the Super Bowel.”

“Americans have no work ethnic at all.”

———

The jokes make themselves, really, don’t they? In fact, my reactions to these errors morph into a kind of sound-alike story problem: “If we put the kidnappers up on a stool and then pumped them up really high, how many stench-filled threats could they throw down? And if your mother is both a cop and a tranny, how many hours does it take her to gently cuff the perps while also serving them mint juleps? Further, if we add in one person worshipping at a colon, can we then arrive at a country that has built itself on the backs of its working ethnics?”

Today, however, I had to reorder the trophies on the Hall of Fame shelf, clearing a space in the center for this one:

“Victoria’s Secrete hasn’t done this country any good.”

Hmmmm. I dare venture the opinion that many, many people are grateful for Victoria’s secretions, even now, in cold and flu season.

As I ponder the possibility of models, doing the slinky walk and oozing from all orifices, even those covered by their million-dollar lingerie, all I know is that I’ll take reading error-littered student work anyday over a job as the mop-up guy after Vickie’s televised runway show.

(EWWW. Just look at the work awaiting Mop-Up Dude #3; the floor is slick with it)

As I return now to my grading, I find myself

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Published by Jocelyn

There's this game put out by the American Girl company called "300 Wishes"--I really like playing it because then I get to marvel, "Wow, it's like I'm a real live American girl who has 300 wishes, and that doesn't suck, especially compared to being a dead one with none."
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My mom works in a bookstore and has similar perks as people butcher titles, especially when getting books as gifts that someone else requested. It’s the stuff of urban legends, but I recall she once had a customer who wanted a book called Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear. I need to check with my mom and see if that is true, or I really want it be true.

This makes me laugh – and brought back one of my favorite teaching moments. I was a GI at Univ of IA and one of my students wrote a paper about _Othello_. In it, he described in great detail how Othello ‘constipated’ the murder of Desdemona.

Oh, HeartsinSanFrancisco, a bingo dauber is a specialized marker that hardcore players use to mark off their numbers as they are called (no old fashioned chip placing for them). I think I watched a ROSEANNE episode once, about thirteen years ago, on which Shelly Winters, as her grandmother, used one.

Brings back memories – being an English teacher, marking was the worst part of my job. Makes me shudder to recall the agony of marking 80 exam papers while trying to teach a full timetable, write end of term reports and retain the will to live. All power to you.